The Conversation: Jackie Morris & Robert Macfarlane

(Tuesday 7th July 2026)

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The Book of Birds – Words and Painting

The creators of The Lost Words present a dazzling celebration of the splendours of birdlife, and an impassioned call to halt the loss of birds from land, sea and sky.

A great thinning of the skies is underway. Around 50% of bird species are in decline worldwide. Our dawns and springs are quieter each year than the last. It does not have to be this way — but we will not save what we do not love.

Robert and Jackie will celebrate the ‘Seven Wonders’ that together make up the everyday miracle of ‘Bird’: Nest, Egg, Beak, Song, Feather, Flight, and Migration. Jackie will paint live and Robert will evoke the habits and habitats of Britain’s birds — their patterns of flight and song, how they hunt and gather, how they nest and raise their young, the stories and myths which attend them, the threats which shadow them, and how their wild lives intersect with our own.